WotR is really a great game, and despite its unexpected and unshareable abandon by GW, it is still alive.

In Italy we had a tournament a few days ago, and it was a success - not just because of participants coming from even great distances, but also because of the clamour it aroused in the national forum. The people who came clean for the event, revealed that there is a large number of potentially enthusiastic players, who are used to play SBG only, but who are ready to start - or to restart - playing WotS.

In fact, as the years passed on, many SBG players have continued collecting figurines, and now they have enough to deploy some 1000-1500 pts. WotR armies. At the same time, many old WotR players who left it for SBG, are now willing to play it again.

This is because the game system is really very good, whilst its main defect - costs - that constrained so many to leave it in the past, was now in part overtaken by collecting passion and time.

What still resists, is WotR's secondary defect: the rulebook imperfections, due to haste of its first edition, that was never to be followed by a second one.

Despite GW's abandon, our experience of players altogether worldwide is now formidable; thus a second edition might be created by ourselves. Also, our strength is such, that this renewed rulebook might gain the weight of a semi-official one.

The only real problem is, how to organize its development and realization. Because, if it is clear that it could be a success only if born from as many users as possible and not from a single or from a small team, it is also clear that it would be a hefty and long work.

An idea - the first one that comes to me - might be to have, for each rule or group of rules, a period for posting change proposals, and a successive period for voting them. This might prove to be a bulky procedure, though. For the project should also have the following targets:

- gain interest and cooperation from as many users as possible;

- adopt the most effective and easy procedure, in order reaching its goal
and not being abandoned in the middle of the work.

Thus, I invite all of you to participate in the discussion, to see if and how this topic might start.

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RESTITUERE INIURIAS, INIURIOS TORQUERE

Aurë entuluva!

I just got back into playing WotR after a long break and I found a blog in one of the other posts on this forum that had a lot of updates to profiles that could be downloaded. Especially Elves, which I play - it provides all the new profiles for the Hobbit as well as long needed updates and balance.

http://bairwaroftheringproject.blogspot.com/2015/02/downloads.html

I especially like that they are all organized, complete and provide a single point of reference that I can use in my games (basically I have a hard copy of each Army that is available that I can take based upon what I am planning on playing that week).

Have you thought about contacting bairchoro and using his work as the starting point for this effort?

I really hope that this takes off - I want to see the game that I love come back from the dead!

Thanks LotR_Fanatic - i appreciate your kind words. Take a look, again; just in the last day there are Downloads available for Legions of Middle Earth to use with SBG and a Dungeon Crawl expansion that can be played as well!

It seems to me that this Bairchoro's site is for commercial purpose, while my idea was for a no profit project.
I think that, as GW has abandoned the game, now a 2nd Edition might only be successful, if born from a joint world-wide effort.

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RESTITUERE INIURIAS, INIURIOS TORQUERE

Aurë entuluva!

I'd have to refind my book,b ut if there's a way to reinvigorate this game, I'm all for being a part of that!

My sig has a link to a work in progress we were doing towards a second edition, and some house rules, played and tested to address balance issues

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A second Edition for The War of the Ring:http://wessexcodex.wordpress.com

Taking the War in Middle earth to a new level!

Oh yes Daerslon, I know very well your work and I appreciate it very much. Though it seemed to me it was in still, for I have noticed no updates there for a long time.
What do you think about accomplishing it? Or, about using this forum to help accomplishing it?

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RESTITUERE INIURIAS, INIURIOS TORQUERE

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It was very active up until a year ago when we played WotR every single week.

Sadly this last 12 months has seen my field the forces of Middle Earth exactly 3 times.

However, I still had a range of ideas that were in development to proceed with the topic.

When we started I saw that a complete second edition would be a big task, so I thought the best way forward, when we were playing, was to identify the most important (to us) or most unbalanced things and address those first, and see how they worked out in playtesting.

The work on the elves and the fortunes and fates and the pricing, does feel a lot better now. We also experimented with fixing some of the issues with cavalry. Initially we tried making them resilience 3, but this just didn't work, and so we fell back to points reductions. Similarly we were in the middle of experimenting with H2K/VH2K monsters as R3 not too. It feels better, but still not quite right as a winged nazgul is a nightmare to deal with/pin down. So it may have to be points again.

My thinking going forward was to address the way units were costed, specifically heavy infantry to start with. Blackshields are a steal at 20, WoMT hardy at 25, and Uruk Hai at 35 seem too much, and then specialist units like The Barad Dur troops or Wardens of the Keys at 50 and 60 points... These are clearly not worth 2 or 2.5 WoMT. Similarly we can all point to the seemingly random disparities in some heroes, and a better method of calculating prices initially based on their stats/abilities needs to be created.

It always seems to come down to points in my view. Most of the rules (most) seem very fluid and make sense. The problems arise when trying to make balanced armies, and secondly deal with the long-known broken combinations (like Nazgul spam, or counsellor chains, or Aragorn and Dain with the Khazads).

So how to move forward? Well so far we were working as a local gaming group of 5 or so players playing every week, and trying out changes. But with the collapse of that I am still interested in proceeding, but in a slightly more abstract way and looking at the rules as a whole, and with the wider community.

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A second Edition for The War of the Ring:http://wessexcodex.wordpress.com

Taking the War in Middle earth to a new level!

Thank you very much for your explanation Daersalon, and overall for your interest in the matter. For you are certainly among, both, the best skilled and the most fond of this game system.

. Yes the task is big. And yet, I'd say, now not so far from its achievement. The knowledge of the game system is in fact well consolidated now - I believe the experience of many players to be already far beyond that of the authors of WotR at the time of its publication. Thus many have the exact sensation of what works better and what and how is to be changed, so they might lend a valid hand in the job.
On the other hand, time is short. GW having abandoned the game means also that the number of players and fans is diminishing fast.
So this might be the very last chance for a 2nd edition to see the light of day.

About myself, my knowledge of the game system is good, but not so deep as to propose my own rulebook update. Not to speech about my knowledge of the English.
As most of you probably know, I'm personally working upon a WotR expansion for First Age; but this relies overall upon new army lists and special rules, so it touches not the core of the rules. For the pricing of the units I have developed a my algorithm in .xls form - probably far to be perfect, but that proved to work sufficiently well. Although I have a small group of players who help me in the testing, the very bulk of the work is upon myself and I must admit that's really hard to act alone.

Coming back to game rules, my intention was, and is, to offer my time overall as a coordinator and as an editor. I opened this topic hoping to find a wide community. That is, a good number of participants as proposers of rule changes, and an even larger one of voters, to choose the best options.
I must say this seems me no longer to be appropriate, as it needed for a participation I've not felt until now.

But there is still the second option open - the one of a smaller community. We might build up a group working together outside, using this Forum not to build-up the rules, but to listen the community upon our prepared drafts.

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RESTITUERE INIURIAS, INIURIOS TORQUERE

Aurë entuluva!

Pity that Italy don't use T³
https://www.tabletoptournaments.net/it/index.php
https://www.tabletoptournaments.net/eu/overview?gid=75

Selling Fan made documents

I have submitted this to the webmasters of our national forum ("Il Sito dell'Anello"). Thank you.

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RESTITUERE INIURIAS, INIURIOS TORQUERE

Aurë entuluva!

You are welcome. I hope Italy community will use this website!